When I first heard of James Clear and his book Atomic Habits, back in late 2018, I thought “the 1% improvement idea is what I’ve been thinking for a couple years now!”
I was well-familiar with the value in defining micro-habits, or next physical action steps. To remove friction, divide the goal into an obvious small action.
I was curious how Clear would flesh this out. I knew that there would be value to gain from his book. You can’t reiterate good ideas enough, and undoubtedly he would offer fresh insights and angles.
(I’ll comment on those angles in a moment. For now, allow me a preamble).
I also had a part of me that was curious about Clear’s opinion on motivation. Often we get into mindsets of “I need to do this,” “I should do this,” or “this is ‘good’ for me.”
I question this because it translates to demanding of oneself, rather than requesting in a compassionate way. It feeds off of moralization, right vs. wrong, good vs. bad.
I think it’s best to stop trying to be a good person. Everything is cost-benefit. The more you see that, the more you cultivate intrinsic motivation, and avoid willpower and discipline.
You then get excited about doing habits because you see the intrinsic benefit of doing them (not because you “should”).
You have integrated your future self with your present self.
You skip the donut because you know you’ll feel better later.
You choose the difficult deep work instead of checking your phone, because you know you’ll derive meaning and accomplishment.
You move your body because you love the mental clarity you’ll receive.
And most of all, you do all of these types of habits because you genuinely love yourself. You want to treat yourself with kindness.
And you love yourself because you’ve done the deeper, root work, of healing inner pain, of identifying your underlying needs, of seeing the inner child, not disconnecting from him or her.
So what does Clear say about intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation?
He doesn’t explicitly discuss it (at least through page 200), but I’m glad to see that he does not advocate willpower and discipline. He instead offers insights on how one can remove friction and incorporate tools such as habit-stacking, habit-tracking, and cues, to intentionally sculpt habits.
I like that he admits that simple tips — such as deleting social media from your phone, or keeping healthy foods visible and unhealthy ones out of the house — don’t necessary solve addictive behavior. These types of tips (which I often incorporate myself), are beneficial because they accumulate and help create an environment for success. Addictions though, need to be solved at the root. Clear doesn’t discuss this in depth (it’s beyond the scope of the book, really), but I’m glad he’s not claiming that solving food addictions, or similar, is as simple as a few tips.
That said, on interviews I’ve heard Clear mention the utility of using small plates to eat less. That’s fine, but I think it misses the point because A) there’s no need to eat less calories for most people, only better calories and B) see above RE healing inner pain. When you heal the inner pain, you can walk through a candy store and genuinely not desire candy. Similarly, a plate size won’t matter if you’ve done the root work.
But overall, I think Clear would agree that striking the root causes empowers motivation. He is clearly a very thoughtful person. The immense value he offers in the book is a manual on choosing the correct nuts and bolts. It’s up to the reader to find the wrench. 🙂
Clear’s Fresh Angles
Here are my top takeaways from the book, up to page 200.
1) “The cost of a good habit is in the present. The cost of a bad habit is in the future.”
While I just questioned the good vs. bad paradigm, this nugget is still valuable. (Remember there are opposing truths).
Essentially, he’s defining “good habit” as delayed gratification. It’s more effortful to save money than spend it, and the gratification is in the future.
I like the short and succinct framing!
2) Environment matters.
The best tomato farmer in the world can’t grow tomatoes in freezing Canada winters.
So understand that your environment will impact you.
The culture of your city.
The habits of your friends.
The location of your desk.
I find it particularly important to create an association between a certain room and where you’re going to do deep work. It can be hard when you live in a smaller place (like I do), but at LEAST separate your computer from your bedroom. The bedroom needs to maintain its association with sleep. The office, with work.
3) Systems, not outcomes
I love this. We need to know our direction and goals, but focus on the process to get there, not the outcome.
If you do 50 push-ups a day, the bigger pecs will take care of themselves.
This reminds us that execution is what matters to transform and achieve in one’s life, not just ambition.
In fact, I heard Clear on Sam Harris’ podcast suggest that an 80/20 process-to-outcomes ratio is a helpful one.
Hey, I wrote about that in 2017! I guess the 80/20 Pareto idea is really a thing. 😉
Go get James Clear’s book!
